It is not uncommon for wireless carriers or other providers of data services to offer rate plans in which the amount payable by a subscriber during a billing cycle is tied to the total amount of data transmitted, i.e. sent and/or received, by the subscriber's wireless device during that cycle (e.g. monthly). For example, a wireless carrier may charge a subscriber, say, $40/month for data transmission (sometimes referred to colloquially as “bandwidth consumption”) not in excess of a data transmission cap (“rate plan cap”, “bandwidth cap”, “bit cap”, or simply “cap”), which may be, e.g., 25 Megabytes, and a surcharge of $2/megabyte for data transmission in excess of that cap. However, at any given time, the subscriber may be unaware of the amount of data already transmitted in relation to the rate plan cap and, as a result, uncertain whether data transmission will result in a surcharge. Even if the subscriber were aware of the amount of data already transmitted, s/he may fail to take the necessary steps to limit data transmission as the cap draws near, e.g. due to inexperience with device configuration or preoccupation with daily activities. Thus the subscriber may continue to engage in activities which may involve significant data transmission, such as wireless web browsing, file downloads and sending or receiving email or multimedia service (MMS) messages, and may inadvertently exceed the data transmission cap and undesirably incur a surcharge or other penalty.
A solution which addresses the above-noted problem or others would be desirable.